In this episode, Sunny Ray talks with Khushi Yadav, founder of Hyuga, an app that helps people move past small talk at events by matching them on shared context. Khushi traces her path from a small town near Banaras, India, through a 25 year engineering career in Nashville's healthcare tech scene, to launching Hyuga after the isolation of 2020. She describes losing family members and two friends to suicide that year, and how the grief exposed a hidden loneliness beneath a full calendar and polished LinkedIn profile. Khushi explains how Hyuga uses AI generated icebreakers and event check ins to pair attendees around real shared interests, and why she pitches investors on human connection rather than AI hype. She also reflects on navigating corporate tech as an Indian woman, the value of finding community, and why she believes connection should be treated as infrastructure, not an afterthought, for workplaces and events alike. The conversation moves between personal loss, career reinvention, and the technical mechanics of building tools for genuine human bonding.
A 25 year tech veteran explains why she quit corporate life to build an app that turns strangers into real connections.
Can you explain what Hyuga does, in simple terms?
Hyuga brings people together who have a shared context. Instead of the usual what do you do conversation, it gets people into something specific they are both experiencing, like mountain biking near an event they are both attending. It gives you an icebreaker so the conversation starts deeper right away, and you can circle back to the surface level stuff later.
So walk me through how it actually works when I meet you at a conference.
Hyuga is an app on your phone. Event organizers decide to use it, and attendees check in, sometimes by scanning a QR code to download the app. You answer four or five questions the organizers set up, and if there are a hundred people at the event, the Hyuga algorithm pairs people based on the answers you chose.
Where did you grow up and what was young Khushi like?
I grew up in a small town near Banaras, about 300 kilometers from New Delhi. I was making rotis by age ten and loved math and science, in a place where girls education wasn't a big deal. My grandfather was in awe that I did better than my cousin brothers. It was simple village life, study, home, and girlfriends, and I didn't know what else I could dream of.
What pulled you into tech when most of your peers weren't thinking about it?
Honestly there is no big story. I was afraid my family would get me married right after school, so I begged my grandfather to let me take an entrance exam. I scored top ten and used that to get into a bachelor's program, then later into Symbiosis for my MBA in IT. I was really just running from the life I was sure I didn't want.
What actually broke for you personally behind the LinkedIn polish in 2020?
2020 got lonely fast. My office and my daughter's school closed, she started kindergarten over Zoom. I lost family members, aunts and grandparents, and I lost two friends to suicide. That loss hit differently because I always thought nothing could get under my skin. I kept asking if I could have called them, and living with that guilt made it clear how lonely they, and I, really were.
What was the unwritten rulebook nobody handed you as an Indian woman climbing the corporate ladder?
You can't just walk in and pitch an idea, you need proof of concept ready before you open your mouth, because people can argue with what you say but not with what's already built. I also learned late that finding a community of women mattered, so someone could tell me when I was right and something wasn't handled fairly. That preparation carried me through every client meeting after.
What was the moment you knew you couldn't go back to a traditional tech career?
My employer had a fresh acquisition and I realized I was solving the same problem for the fifth different job in a row. I was bored and it felt meaningless. I'd also already climbed the ladder, so there was nowhere left to climb and I was still unhappy. Doing the same thing again and hoping for a different result felt foolish, so I decided to build what my soul actually wanted.
Investors asked why you weren't riding the AI wave. Where did your conviction to build for humans come from?
It came from the loss. My son is sixteen, and loneliness is hitting young men hardest right now, so I knew that was the path I had to take. AI is behind Hyuga for the icebreakers and scheduling, but my pitch deck doesn't lead with AI, it leads with human connection, because I wanted investors who buy into that mission, not ones who'd steer it toward something else for profit.
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